I didn’t get much reading done during my recent trip to D.C. and NYC (clearly, I ought to refer to it as the Acronym Adventure), but I did manage two novels during the latter portion. I just got home last night, but I really want to dive back into blogging, so I thought I’d tell you about them today!

First was The Family Man by Elinor Lipman, recommended by Jenny. This was my first Lipman book, and I chose it because it’s set in Manhattan; it was fun to read it and actually recognise the geographical references! The best way I can describe it is as a romantic comedy in book form. I happen to very much enjoy well-done rom coms (Nora Ephron, anyone?), and this one engaged me from the beginning. Henry, in his fifties, recently retired from being a lawyer, and currently a single gay man…

I’m starting to feel a bit better guys. :) I’m hoping that means I’ll be able to resume daily posting, but I’m just glad I feel well enough to write a review today! (Also, thanks to everyone’s suggestions, I got 7 different TV shows on DVD from my library last night, so I have lots of options for relaxation time!)

I’ve read a lot of books since I’ve been gone: it turns out that when I can’t read blogs or work much on my own, I have a lot more free time. ;) Of course, I never would have found all the books I’ve been reading if it weren’t for blogging, so don’t think I’m going to disappear any time soon! Anyway, my point is, for my review today I had a lot of titles to choose from, but I didn’t hesitate for a second. I knew I wanted to…

Mankind has arrived at a crossroads; a fact many of us have recognised by now. We can no longer afford focusing only on our own country, region, minority, party-politics, religion, race or on any factor that divides us. Our attempts to resolve our locally or thematically specific issues in isolation from the generic global trend will remain futile symptom-treatments. In order to set feasible goals and effective methods towards a better future, we need to investigate and eliminate the globally relevant root-causes behind all local issues.

Following Martin Luther King’s famous quote:
“Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war”
this post is to summarise – from all perspectives and with supporting references – our prospects in the very near future in the case we fail to live up to such ultimate moral demand of our times.

The citizens of all indebted countries should reject Austerity and odious Public Debts

Summary of the reasons for above:

1) All public debts that have been accumulated on behalf of respective countries’ citizenry without their knowledge and/or consent, are odious debts, that is, they are of illegal origin [1, 2]

2) The way Loans are issued in extant global monetary system – including theLoans given to Governments – is illegal as well; the “creditors” who make Loans do so by merely entering empty computer digits on bank servers. [3, 4, 5, 6]

3) The genocidal neoliberal policy attached with Government Loans as an imposed package-deal requirement: Privatisations, Cuts and Austerity – as proven by both theory [7] and practice [8, 9] – worsens the Crisis and includes massive-scale transfer of public property into private hands. All these are illegal acts with effects equivalent with those of overt forms of genocide…

In extant financial-economic system Banks keep “bailing out” Governments and Governments keep “bailing out” Banks, and in both cases the 99% of us – the Taxpayers – have to pay £ / € / $ trillions. Meanwhile the elites of each country, the “top 1%”, are getting richer by actually grabbing these £ / € / $ trillions.

This blog-post – specifically updated and offered as a starting point of investigation to seek legal remedies and Debt-relief for the long-suffering Greek people [9] – explains the REAL reason behind the global phenomenon of Public Debts, Crisis and Austerity.

Loaned Money is just IOU, Debt is a phantom, Austerity is planned poverty

At the very core of the global Crisis and Debt-trap, we find a series of fictitious transactions – Government- bonds and Bank-bailouts – that result in the…

Tomorrow’s EU Summit will seal Greece’s fate in the Eurozone. As these lines are being written, Euclid Tsakalotos, my great friend, comrade and successor as Greece’s Finance Ministry is heading for a Eurogroup meeting that will determine whether a last ditch agreement between Greece and our creditors is reached and whether this agreement contains the degree of debt relief that could render the Greek economy viable within the Euro Area. Euclid is taking with him a moderate, well-thought out debt restructuring plan that is undoubtedly in the interests both of Greece and its creditors. (Details of it I intend to publish here on Monday, once the dust has settled.) If these modest debt restructuring proposals are turned down, as the German finance minister has foreshadowed, Sunday’s EU Summit will be deciding between kicking Greece out of the Eurozone now or keeping it in for a little while longer, in a state of…